Points of Canon: S4x04 - Daring Don’t

Ah, the episode that established Daring Do as non-fiction. Or did it really?

It’s worth a special notice that comics, at this point, did not treat her as such: Friendship is Magic #15-16 contains the earliest heavy-meta storyline where the Mane 6 encounter explicitly fictional characters, and Daring Do is on the list. Of course, one can be both fictional and real within the same universe…

• Fluttershy is teaching anonymous bird chicks to fly using a visual aid. These are some smart chicks, not to mention the visual acuity.
• “Four more months, four more months, four more months! I bet you’re excited, huh?” See the arguments in RTAC #13 – Rainbow is talking about months like they’re contain at least 30 days on average throughout this episode.
• “Will she at long last stalk the Fortress of Talacon?” Rainbow is talking like this has been going for a while, which means that the fortress had to have been mentioned in a prior book. This is later supported by “Ahuizotl has sought control of the Tenochtitlan Basin since book three!” and will be important in a bit.
• The very first shots concerning said fortress – still in Rainbow’s imagination, but they’re a match anyway – depict a moderately dense temperate forest with conifers in it, rather than a jungle. This maintains throughout the episode, with exactly one exception, more on that below.
• Pretty much all the defenders of Talacon have interesting culture-specific cutie marks - one of which is an Aztec-style pyramid temple. They’re also shooting bows in a peculiar manner, by holding the bow in a hoof, and the end of the arrow in their teeth. That’s still Rainbow’s imagination, and we don’t see anyone actually do that, though…
• Daring Do spins a mini-tornado using her tail to stop the arrows. Whether pegasi actually can do something of the sort remains uncertain, but I don’t see why a sufficiently skilled pegasus would not be able to.
• “Or will her next adventure bring her face to face with the vast and horrible Ahuizotl himself?!” …Wait, so why is he “vast?”
• Rainbow gets swirly-eyed from just colliding with a nest, and doesn’t even damage the nest much. She’s quite inconsistent about being resistant to blunt force trauma.
• “Three months and twenty six days, three months and twenty six days, three months and twenty six days!” See above.
• “We’re having a holiday party!” For this party, Applejack is wearing a red hat with a white apple pattern that she never wore otherwise. I wonder what’s the story behind that. Pinkie is wearing a cutie-mark-customized fez, and I don’t think this one appears again either. Fluttershy is wearing a cute top hat which I wish she wore again, and Rarity is wearing a diadem with hearts which doesn’t suit her.
• “I came to invite you personally, but it seems you were a speck too busy reading the last Daring Do book for the twelfth time.” I wonder if Applejack had to use the balloon to do it.
• “Two more months?! I’ve been waiting so long already!” From my experience with publishing industry, books usually wouldn’t get announced until they’re in editing. But maybe it doesn’t work this way in Equestria.
• “How could you possibly know that before me? I’m the series’ biggest fan!” Twilight, princess or no, displays hard to acquire insider knowledge about Yearling. She doesn’t know where Yearling lives, but thinks she can find out, and eventually does. Fanon typically associates it with her mother and the “Daring Do Award” caught on the wall in her family home during Neigh Anything (Friendship is Magic #11-12) – originally, Twilight Velvet was thought to be the author of Daring Do books herself – and I should say that Once Upon A Zeppelin does make this idea more credible.
• “A.K. Yearling just might be my favorite author. I know everything about her. Where she grew up, where she studied literature, where she wrote the first Daring Do book…” Notice, however, that if everything Twilight knows about Yearling is true, she did study literature somewhere. This never comes up again.
• “The new book is obviously delayed because she needs help dealing with whatever everyday nonsense is distracting her from spending her every living breathing second writing!” Actually, did anyone write a fic about Rainbow Dash titled “Misery?”
• Throughout this sequence, Twilight is wearing a conical party hat over her horn. When she uses magic to move around the tray with cupcakes, the entire hat lights up.
• The map travel sequence displays strange loops. But in any case, the map does match Equestria’s published maps, and the route ends near Vanhoover. Notice that the route in Daring Done does indeed start in the same location where this one ends.
• The trash around Yearling’s house is nothing special, except for a single wheel behind the house. There’s no cart to go with it.
• “Hoo-wee, somepony really trashed this place.” And left the fireplace burning, which is actually very strange.
• The Ring of Scorchero is kept in a faux-book with a coded lock which is clearly magical, seeing how it lights up.
• Yearling is using a three-key typewriter, which I mentioned before. These have to be chording and fiendishly mechanically complex, but it is possible to make one type a reasonable alphabet. A power source would be in order, though.
• This is the first time when Twilight being a princess should get noticed. It doesn’t, starting a long, long trend.

• “You should tell that to those guys.”

  • Actually, why are they entering through the roof window? They’re all earth ponies. Were they hiding in the roof straw the entire time or something?
  • All of the Caballeron goons have interesting cutie marks, mostly related to comic depictions of physical violence.
• “A.K. Yearling is Daring Do!” Actually, I’m not convinced the information available to them at this point is sufficient to conclude that without seeing Daring Do previously during Friendship is Magic #15-16. I don’t think the books contain any photographs, do they?
• The ring goes red hot in under a second. I don’t think this is possible with normal gold.
• “That’s Doctor Caballeron to you.” I think that’s also the first use of the title for anything other than medicine.

• “He’s from book four: Daring Do and the Razor of Dreams.”

  • The fourth book is titled “Daring Do and the Razor of Dreams.”
  • That would make it not part of the first trilogy, wouldn’t it? And yet, book 4 continues the plotline started in book 3. Strange how in Stranger Than Fan Fiction, Quibble Pants refuses to acknowledge books that are not part of the first trilogy, and yet he knows everything about Caballeron…
• “You’re stealing the ring to give to him so his hold on the Fortress of Talacon will be good for eight centuries as foretold by prophecy!” There’s a prophecy – and Ahuizotl is effectively immortal, or going to be if he succeeds, if he expects to live eight more centuries. And also, ponies use centuries in primary canon too, which I forgot about.
• “You’re dooming the valley to eight centuries of unrelenting heat!” Considering that as far as we can tell, they never move too far from Vanhoover to reach the said fortress – the forest is identical, so they definitely never change climate zones, and as far as we can tell, it’s at most two days walk – unrelenting heat in what is essentially the equivalent of Oregon or Washington would be interesting to see. Why would the area be called “Tenochtitlan Basin” is another question, but as far as I can tell, yes it is.

• “To market, henchponies!” …there are questions I have about this phrase.

  • Is Ahuizotl waiting for them at a market, or it’s just a figure of speech? Wouldn’t it involve interacting with ponies if so?
  • So he calls them “henchponies” and they just accept this? Do they have a union too?
• Daring Do applies a splint to her front right leg. Is it broken? Because if it’s broken, she recovers ridiculously quickly, even before Rainbow finds her after that argument with Twilight.
• “True, but in book four, she defeated Ahuizotl and secured control of the Amulet of Atonement, dispelling the dark magic of the Ketztwctl Empress, and thus protecting the basin with the Radiant Shield of Razdon!” I think “Ketztwctl” is actually pronounced “Quetzalcoatl.” None of the things mentioned ever turn up, though here’s another oddity: If this area of Equestria really is the Tenochtitlan, and they didn’t mysteriously teleport to somewhere else entirely, Daring Do has already dispelled some manner of dark magic over it, which can be restored. So why wasn’t it in the papers, outing Daring Do as real?…
• “Okay, but sounds to me like we’re in way, way, way over our heads.” Being a princess does not give you much of anything in terms of authority, does it?
• I think this is the only time when we actually catch ponies eating unprocessed hay: Caballeron and company are plucking hay bales.
• “Looks like they decided to have an early dinner before making their way back down the hill to the marketplace in town.” They never say which town they mean, but the closest one on the map would be Vanhoover. In any case, you definitely wouldn’t move all the way across Equestria to reach a town you won’t even name, unless it was the closest one around, so yes, the Fortress of Talacon is in Daring Do’s back yard.
• “You’re gonna ambush them like in book four at the Horavian caves!” Another unmapped place.
• “Oh, uh, well… I did have another buyer lined up, but he’s not here, so… sounds like we have a deal.” So is this bag of bits real or not?
• Ahuizotl has impeccable dramatic timing, but why exactly did he go searching for Caballeron in the first place? Was he late?
• So why doesn’t Daring Do just fly away now? If her wings got damaged, she splinted the wrong limb.
• Notice that the Fortress of Talacon as seen later in the episode is nothing like the temple structure that is directly in view from the place where Caballeron has been camping, the one that Ahuizotl carries Daring Do off to. This one has palm trees growing around it, and they’re the only palm trees in the episode. Animation error? Because I really don’t think this has any room to be real on the weight of other visual evidence. The interior of the place, however, can be the typical temple interior if it likes.
• “If we can remove the giant ring at the bottom, the whole fortress will collapse!” I wonder how exactly does she know that.
• Rainbow and Daring are trying to lift the last ring and straining to do so. For the record, a golden ring of this size would weigh about a metric ton, give or take a few hundred kilograms. But a golden ring of this size would never shatter when dropped, which is what happens to this one, so this estimate is not very useful.
• Rainbow Dash narrates a Friendship Journal record, and is shown writing in the journal, but the act of writing does not happen immediately upon her return home: she is interrupted by the mailpony bringing the new book, and says that she got it “a week before anypony else gets it!” At least a few weeks would be required to complete it and put it through the printing process, especially considering that when the whole adventure started, it was scheduled to be released in three months and 26 days. This is chronologically important, because the printed version of the Friendship Journal contains records for almost all of the Season 4 episodes in airing order, with only two exceptions. See also Fame and Misfortune
• For a change, that’s the same mailpony seen in Princess Twilight Sparkle, with the same uniform.
• The printed book is titled “Daring Do and the Ring of Destiny,” and has a recognizable Rainbow Dash on the cover.

Welcome to Equestria, the land of cruel and unusual geography.

Comments

[Mitch H]

Funny thing? Mexico City, which is in the Tenochtitlan Basin, is in a region with oak and pine trees, because it's so far up in the mountains. It's higher in elevation than Denver.

All of the Caballeron goons have interesting cutie marks, mostly related to comic depictions of physical violence.

So what are the distinctions between mooks, goons, and minions?

unrelenting heat in what is essentially the equivalent of Oregon or Washington would be interesting to see. Why would the area be called “Tenochtitlan Basin” is another question, but as far as I can tell, yes it is.

OTOH, this basin may be the equivalent of the American Great Basin, whose northern extent encompasses eastern Oregon and part of Washington State. Although the Great Basin is known primarily for being arid-to-desolate-desert, and the heavily forested portions of each state are on the seaward side of the Cascades.

So he calls them “henchponies” and they just accept this? Do they have a union too?

Minions, Mooks and Henchponies Local #1313.

[FanOfMostEverything]

The party was clearly for Silly Hat Day.

I don’t think the books contain any photographs, do they?

Do the cover illustrations count? And even if they don't, I think the coloration, outfit, and Ring of Scorchero would be pretty conclusive evidence.

Strange how in Stranger Than Fan Fiction, Quibble Pants refuses to acknowledge books that are not part of the first trilogy, and yet he knows everything about Caballeron…

Oh, he's read the entire series; he just hates most of it. Though it is odd that he'd praise a villain from the not-in-my-headcanon portion of the series.

If this area of Equestria really is the Tenochtitlan, and they didn’t mysteriously teleport to somewhere else entirely, Daring Do has already dispelled some manner of dark magic over it, which can be restored. So why wasn’t it in the papers, outing Daring Do as real?…

The same reason ponies can walk through Canterlot unrecognized after they're honored there in a Star Wars medal ceremony.

Being a princess does not give you much of anything in terms of authority, does it?

It does give you access to unlisted addresses, though. Still, that's a very strange statement for the Dispeller of the Nightmare, Queller of Discord, Bane of Changelings, et al to make in general.

[Oliver]

4713446

So what are the distinctions between mooks, goons, and minions?

Simple, really.

• Mooks have a connotation of suffering and being mowed down, they’re explicitly cannon fodder, and have to be identical, typically uniformed. Your usual sentai villains and kung fu movie villains employ mooks.
• Goons carry a connotation of inflicting damage instead, are normally less numerous, are permitted to be different and colorful. They also tend to be physically imposing. Mafiosi tend to employ goons and use them for racketeering. Unlike mooks, who are never encountered sans their boss, goons can occasionally operate independently under orders.
• Minions do not have a direct connotation of violence, either suffering it or inflicting it, they are a general purpose servant type, they are not prescribed to be identical or distinct, and aren’t even necessarily in service of a villain – a neutral character might have minions too. A good one will almost never do, however.

Minions, Mooks and Henchponies Local #1313.

Well, it’s a legitimate question, the henchmen in Venture Bros do.

[Oliver]

4713448

The party was clearly for Silly Hat Day.

Pinkie calls it a “National Random Holiday Party Day!” which Rarity confirms as bogus, so maybe in Pinkie’s mind, but not otherwise.

Do the cover illustrations count? And even if they don’t, I think the coloration, outfit, and Ring of Scorchero would be pretty conclusive evidence.

Every Daring Do con contains dozens of cosplayers, though, and some have to be sufficiently hardcore to do all that and more…

The same reason ponies can walk through Canterlot unrecognized after they’re honored there in a Star Wars medal ceremony.

Actually, here’s an interesting thought I just had:

1. There’s a potential chronology gap in the ending of Magical Mystery Cure, when Twilight already has wings, but is not crowned yet. We don’t know just how long it is, but it can be up to about a month wide.
2. Twilight is never referred to as a princess in this episode, nobody mentions anything.
3. Rainbow ends the episode by writing in the Friendship Journal, but this concludes with receiving the advance copy of the book “a week” before anyone else gets it, and the book was scheduled to be released in almost three months when Rainbow decides Yearling urgently needs to be helped with her writing.

I.e. this episode does not have to follow Castle Mane-ia – the scene at the end that has to, also has to be separated from the rest of the episode by an undetermined period of time, bringing the body of the episode where everyone ignores the new princess to the moment before the coronation. This would also do a bit to explain Twilight’s reaction that this is way over her head: You don’t want to get involved in an adventure when you have a huge mess of a coronation coming up in a few weeks.

[Meta Four]

4713448

Strange how in Stranger Than Fan Fiction, Quibble Pants refuses to acknowledge books that are not part of the first trilogy, and yet he knows everything about Caballeron…

Oh, he's read the entire series; he just hates most of it. Though it is odd that he'd praise a villain from the not-in-my-headcanon portion of the series.

It makes more sense if some of the Daring Do books are prequels or interquels. Caballeron made his literary debut in one of the first three books that AK Yearling published... but due to the prequels, this book actually falls fourth in the Daring Do chronology. If you call it “book four” in front of Quibble Pants, he gets angry and says he won’t use the reordered book numbers, because he doesn’t want to acknowledge the prequels.

[howard035]

I think the Fortress and the Basin have to be somewhere in Southern Equestria, given the fact that an entire tribal subculture apparently lives there permanently, and we just got a time-skip from them traveling between forests on trains and such. It's hard to believe Celestia would tolerate this thing long-term in her kingdom, and apparently the fortress has been around for multiple books. I don't see how it could be a few days out of Vanhoover. Also, if the Basin is outside the Equestrian Kingdom, Twilight would feel a lot more out of her depths acting as a Princess to stop someone committing a crime.

So we have this group of ponies that all have their own unique clothing, jewelry and body paint, and Ahuizotl seems to dress similarly to them. They seem to be the only residents of this other uninhabited basin, and apparently their goal is to maintain control of their homeland and turn up the heat around them. So of course Daring not only has to stop that, she has to destroy the home of the entire tribe on top of things. It kind of makes sense that AK Yearling's studies are in literature, because she certainly hasn't studied archeology or anthropology ethics.

“The new book is obviously delayed because she needs help dealing with whatever everyday nonsense is distracting her from spending her every living breathing second writing!” Actually, did anyone write a fic about Rainbow Dash titled “Misery?”

It would have been an interesting twist if Dash had actually been right about this, and the rest of the episode is Dash doing AK's laundry and sweeping her house until she gets bored out of her mind and snaps.

Quibble Pants refuses to acknowledge books that are not part of the first trilogy, and yet he knows everything about Caballeron…

True. Quibble clearly has to still be reading the Daring Do books, even if it's just to complain about them. And it seems a pretty big coincidence that Caballeron is introduced in the same book that Quibble thinks ruined the series.

Theory: When the 4th book came out, lots of other fans started shipping Caballeron and Daring Doo in their fanzines and at conventions. As the owner of one of those body pillows, Quibble was outraged at the idea of this and deflected his anger onto the new series as a whole. Yes, I'm saying that Caballeron is Quibble's own personal Flash Sentry.

“Or will her next adventure bring her face to face with the vast and horrible Ahuizotl himself?!” …Wait, so why is he “vast?”

Daring isn't above inserting a fat joke about her enemies into her writing.

4713461 I thought the Guild was really more for bosses than Henchmen. I'd hate to be the Union Rep telling Sovereign they're going on strike.

4713513 I like this chronology explanation, and it also explains why she's so good at flying. Keep an eye on this gap, it could fit other things, like Twilight being ignored by Manehatten cabbies.

[Oliver]

4713577

I think the Fortress and the Basin have to be somewhere in Southern Equestria, given the fact that an entire tribal subculture apparently lives there permanently, and we just got a time-skip from them traveling between forests on trains and such.

So they go to market “in town” all the way to Southern Equestria, where they mysteriously locate a coniferous forest identical to the one they started in, right.

That’s the problem here: both the implied geography and solving it by introducing a time-skip where there’s no room for one are ridiculous.

On the other hand, you do remember that the pony China is somewhere in Pennsylvania?

So of course Daring not only has to stop that, she has to destroy the home of the entire tribe on top of things.

…Are you trying to do worse than the scriptwriters?

If you’re worried about these guys, I’m not really joking when I’m suggesting that the culture that Ahuizotl’s relics belong to is long since dead, and these ponies are actually local grad students.

I mean, you’ve got to get the material for your thesis somehow, what are you supposed to do if you’re specializing in an extinct culture and the only source is an insane blue mutant with an extra hand for a tail?

It would have been an interesting twist if Dash had actually been right about this, and the rest of the episode is Dash doing AK’s laundry and sweeping her house until she gets bored out of her mind and snaps.

Someone should write that.

Yes, I’m saying that Caballeron is Quibble’s own personal Flash Sentry.

That would be a neat twist.

I’d hate to be the Union Rep telling Sovereign they’re going on strike.

They’re only allowed to go on strike in their off-duty time, of course.

Keep an eye on this gap, it could fit other things, like Twilight being ignored by Manehatten cabbies.

I’m worried it might get too long if we try to squeeze too much into it, but I do think some episodes might get pushed into there.

It would involve ignoring the implied chronological order in the printed Friendship Journal, but those records are largely independent and could in theory get pushed around.

[Meta Four]

4713577

Theory: When the 4th book came out, lots of other fans started shipping Caballeron and Daring Doo in their fanzines and at conventions. As the owner of one of those body pillows, Quibble was outraged at the idea of this and deflected his anger onto the new series as a whole. Yes, I'm saying that Caballeron is Quibble's own personal Flash Sentry.

It’s an amusing theory, but this whole line of inquiry was kicked off by Quibble Pants praising Caballeron as a well-written villain. So by your logic, Quibble is like a brony who hates Equestria Girls but defends Flash Sentry. And as far as I can tell, that sort of brony doesn’t actually exist anywhere.

[howard035]

4713901 Ah shoot, I forgot that. I've always wondered about the difference between the first three books and the rest of them. Quibble has read and researched things in detail, yet he truly thought the first three were "realistic" while the latter were not. But since they were all supposedly barely-disguised biographies, what made Daring's later books different then? Perhaps the fourth book is when Yearling felt she had mastered literature enough that she didn't need Twilight Velvet ghostwriting for her anymore.

[Meta Four]

4713906
Possibly.

I had some other theories here. In short: Maybe her publisher heavily edited the first three books, because they also thought Daring’s barely-disguised biography was too unrealistic. Then when those books were hugely successful, AK Yearling renegotiated her contract and got herself Protection From Editors. Or perhaps Daring Do’s real adventures got more action-packed and less cerebral over time. As her enemies started taking her more seriously and responding more violently, Daring wound up in fewer scenarios she could puzzle her way out of, and more she had to punch her way out of.

[howard035]

4713928
That makes a lot of sense.

[Oliver]

4713928

Or perhaps Daring Do’s real adventures got more action-packed and less cerebral over time.

Notice that Caballeron would have to be the one responsible for this, if so.